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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843445">the sun the moon the truth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/itslaurenmae/pseuds/itslaurenmae'>itslaurenmae</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Barkskins (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Background mentions of Ratasenthos, Background mentions of Renardette, Background mentions of Yvon, Blood, Religious Imagery &amp; Symbolism, Shapeshifting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:20:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,222</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843445</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/itslaurenmae/pseuds/itslaurenmae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, the truth.</p><p>Bleeding out on the ground, Hamish remembers the first time he read those words in a very old book back in England.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the sun the moon the truth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/gifts">merrymegtargaryen</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, the truth. </em>
</p><p>Bleeding out on the ground, Hamish remembered the first time he read those words in a very old book back in England as he was being educated at boarding school. </p><p>He’d been a boy of thirteen, and the book certainly hadn’t been intended for the pupils like him to read, but it hadn’t been locked up or hidden away and was sitting open in Master Leonard’s study. While Hamish waited for his instructor to return and begin their French lesson, he’d taken the book into his hungry hands, run his fingers over the yellowed pages, feasted on the small, inky words on the page. There were other sayings, too, but that one caught his eye and arrested his attention and etched its way into his memory, latched itself into his mind and onto his heart, the way the Bible said Scripture was supposed to - and there they stayed.</p><p>
  <em> Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, the truth. </em>
</p><p>These were not the words of the Christian faith, ancient or current. They weren’t the words of Catholics or Protestants or Cathars or Anabaptists. They weren’t white men’s words, they weren’t from the Q’aran or the Torah or any of the other religious texts he’d seen, but they struck Hamish Goames just the same.</p><p>No, these words came from some other system, from another way of believing, and in them, something profound resonated. </p><p>
  <em> Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, the truth. </em>
</p><p>He’d always remembered those words, still found them making their way into the margins of his notes for the Company - notes he’d tear out and put aside for himself in another book. Or burn. Notes no one should see. </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>One time, Yvon did see. </p><p>“Where did you find those words, Hamish?”</p><p>“In a very old book.”</p><p>“It’s no poetry I’ve ever seen.”</p><p>“It is not,” Hamish replied, grinning slyly. It was not often that he was familiar with words that Yvon was not already familiar with. His old friend was the most well-read man Hamish had ever known, exempting only his own instructor back in England. </p><p>“Where are they from?”</p><p>“The Buddha.”</p><p>“The Buddha?” Yvon smiled. “I didn’t know you’d studied the Eastern religions.”</p><p>“I didn’t,” Hamish responded. “Not in any great depth, anyway. I found it, in a tome I wasn’t supposed to be reading. When I was a boy.”</p><p>“Always curious.”</p><p>“Yes, Yvon. I saw it on a table, while waiting for the headmaster to return. I don’t think I was meant to be looking, but my curiosity - ”</p><p>“It always gets the better of you,” Yvon completed the thought.</p><p>“It does.”</p><p>“I like it,” Yvon said. </p><p>“I do, too.”</p><p>This was an acceptable thing for Hamish to admit to Yvon now, years after he’d first seen those words, away from the strict tutelage of his instructors and the clucking disapproval of his sister. She’d never heard him utter the words, but Alice was very devout, and Hamish knew she wouldn’t like it.</p><p><br/>.<br/><br/></p><p>He hadn’t considered himself much of a Christian for some time now. Even bleeding out in the woods in the cold, hard sun, he didn’t find himself thinking about the benedictions or creeds he’d memorized. The words of the Bible didn’t affect him the way they used to, if they ever had - save for a few passages in Psalms and Ecclesiastes. But that phrase, those words - they stuck even after all these years.</p><p>
  <em> Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. </em>
</p><p>He saw them in his mind’s eye, pictured his dirty hands scribbling them one more time into his overlarge leatherbound field journal. Sometimes, when he wrote, it was just those words - the sun, the moon the truth - sometimes it was just “cannot be long hidden” - but the phrase crept its way into his mind, into his hands, onto his words on the page.</p><p>The bullet had entered his chest somewhere. It missed his heart directly, so he was able to continue drawing on the words that had inscribed themselves there. Every breath, every thought a beat of his heart, every inhale a reminder.</p><p> </p><p>On the ship from England to New France, when he woke up from an uneasy sleep. Alice’s voice. “It is not long until the morning now.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The sun. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>In the woods, Randall Cross bleeding out at his feet.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The moon. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Who do you serve, Mr. Goames?” Bouchard asked. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The truth. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>We are all animals. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> It cannot be long hidden. </em>
</p><p><br/>.</p><p> </p><p>He closes his eyes and tries to focus on more specific times those words were true, drawing in a painful lungful of air. Is that what the bullet had pierced, his lung? He couldn’t be sure.</p><p>He crawls away from Ratasenthos, tries to focus on making distance, spits leaves and dirt away. Closes his eyes, thinks about… </p><p> </p><p>How those were the words that came to him to after he finds the girl Renardette in the woods. She can’t or doesn’t want to speak, and that’s okay, because those words are true. <em> Three things cannot be long hidden </em>…. She can have all the time she needs. Hamish is not in a hurry.</p><p> </p><p>They’re the words he thought as he and Yvon left the company’s office in Quebec City on their way back to Wobik. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t like the man Cooke he’s supposed to be working alongside, doesn’t like that he didn’t know where his brother in law had fucked off to. But the words remain. <em> It cannot be long hidden.</em></p><p> </p><p>He thought the words as he held Cross’s body to himself and drove the knife into his gut. Hamish had seen, and in the light of the moon, he’d been reborn.</p><p> </p><p>The sun, the moon, the truth. It cannot be long hidden.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>Ratasenthos has him on his back now, and he’s going to deliver the killing blow at any moment. Hamish lifts those words up in a silent prayer, to whatever is waiting for him on the other side of his consciousness. This is the end, and he is dying. Maybe one day, truth about him will be uncovered. He closes his eyes and surrenders.</p><p>It might be the next breath, it might be the next heartbeat, the new gush of blood ebbing out of his broken veins, the flow of his thoughts red and running and then...</p><p> </p><p>Renardette standing over him, the sun behind her, knowing that at any moment he would bleed out onto the forest floor. Ratasenthos falling away from him due to her stab to his neck, and the blood, so much blood. She smiled. It was dawn, it was dusk. <em> Thesunthemoonthetruth </em> - they all blended together then, a confluence of things he could not hide from anymore.</p><p> </p><p>Yes, he was dying. Yes, he wasn’t wholly human anymore. And yes, this was the way things were meant to be. Him and her and in the woods and blood, so much blood. <em> Pro pelle cutem </em> , a skin for a skin, a life for a life, a debt is repaid. And as his human body healed itself and his skin changed, the howl from deep within leaving his lungs in an involuntary release, he remembered them again. <em> The sun, the moon, the truth. </em> An anchor. </p><p> </p><p><em> It </em> cannot be long hidden.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading this piece. It's largely headcanon and a bit meandering on purpose.</p><p>I first became familiar with the saying "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, the truth" when I watched Teen Wolf back in 2016. Some of the characters adopt it as an anchor, a motto that keeps them from shifting at inopportune times. I took the idea of having an anchor and kind of shifted it around here - what if someone used those words not as an anchor to staying human, but as a mantra to pass from one form to another? What if it was something Hamish had repeated to himself in the past, and maybe didn't know yet that it was keeping the creature at bay, and that thinking it as he's dying makes it an admonishment, an atonement, a releasing of who he once was and allowing himself to be the animal inside?</p><p>As always, thanks to Meg aka jeynepoole on tumblr for discussion, feedback, and forever engaging with me in my headcanons.</p><p>I can't stop thinking about this show and these characters. Truly was my favorite from 2020. </p><p>And, thank *you* again for reading! Feel free to follow me on tumblr @itslaurenmae.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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